Interview: what is the greatest challenge in mobile today?

In our continuing series of talks with mobile industry experts, we asked several of them to discuss some of the leading challenges and opportunities in mobile communication:

Ross Rubin, Director of Industry Analysis, The NPD Group:
On the handset side, we continue to face the challenge of balancing so many features against a portable device with good ergonomics and battery life. On the network side, we are still building out 3G infrastructure and not yet delivering it at an affordable price point. And on the content side, we continue to search for ways to deliver compelling mobile services across a wide array of devices using diverse development standards.

Ben Keighran, founder & CEO of mobile social messenger Bluepulse:
Mobile phones are like snow flakes. They all look the same but are completely different. Developing consumer products for mobile phones is extremely challenging.

Jyri Engeström, co-founder of mobile microblogger Jaiku:
To work for consumers, mobile ads should be much more relevant: things that are current right now in your social and geographic neighborhood. There’s still a lot of room for innovation there, and also risks… We believe in the long run, our most compelling business model is to provide a free basic service that is supported by advertising, and offer additional features for an optional subscription fee. We currently display ads on the Web site but not on the mobile.

Dave Singer, vice-president and US general manager at Telmap:
Mobile customers are being bombarded with so many different options for devices, applications, ringtones, etc. As an industry we need to keep thing very simple for our customers and make it very easy for them to purchase and use our application.